Doing It My Way - Freelance Traveller

Doing It My Way
Traveller for the 21st Century
by John Snead
Traveller is one of the oldest SF RPGs and
many people now treat it as retro-SF modeled on
the space opera novels of the 1960s and 1970s.
While it can do this well, during the 1980s and
early 1990s, the writers and developers at both
GDW and DGP did their best to keep Traveller
feeling like the sort of SF that was current at this
time. However, these efforts (along with GDW)
ended around 15 years ago. Since that time, personal
electronics and the internet have changed
many of our assumptions about technology, and SF
has also changed.
With the publication of The New Space Opera
(edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan) in
2008, we have seen a strong resurgence of space
opera stories and novels that are the clear descendents
of the works that spawned Traveller. My
goal in this article is to provide some suggestions
for helping to update Traveller to a modern understanding
of technology and modern ideas about
space opera, without transforming it into a different
game. This article is in three parts: the first is about
updating Traveller to better fit with our current understanding
of various technologies, specifically
electronics and biotechnology. The 2nd part is a list
of common personal electronics used in the Imperium,
and the third is a discussion of modern
space opera and how to tweak Traveller so that it
feels more like modern space opera, while still definitively
remaining the same excellent RPG that
we know and love. All three articles contain a few
footnotes that are listed at the end of the third article.
These footnotes are all references to various
web pages detailing new technologies that are both
changing our world and that would be available in
the Imperium.
Part I: Traveller and Modern Technology
One of the most important points to keep in
mind is that Traveller was created well before the
advent of the sort of modern communication and
data access that many of us now take for granted.
When Traveller was new, there was no public
internet, cell phones did not exist, and universal
wireless data access was barely imagined in SF.
However, we now live in a very different world.
Today, telling players that their PCs, who are carrying
around TL 12 gear, cannot access whatever
information they want when they are in range of
their ship or a planetary data network is going to
puzzle and annoy players who carry a smartphone
or similar device and have grown to expect this sort
of data access in the present day.
I‘ve heard various older gamers say that cell
phones and smart phones and similar devices ruin
many standard RPG plots. I firmly believe that the
existence of such devices and technologies changes
these plots, but that they provide as many new opportunities
as they eliminate. For modern day examples
of how to use such technologies in adventure
plots, take a look at TV shows like Burn Notice
or Leverage. It‘s not difficult to mine these
shows for examples of how instant and ubiquitous
communications and data access can enhance RPG
plots, including Traveller plots.
Here are a few suggestions for updating electronics,
computers, and biotechnology in Traveller.
These modifications will not significantly change
the nature of the Imperium and will have little impact
on play for players who are used to both using
smartphones in their daily life and seeing similar
electronics used in modern day crime and espionage
movies and TV shows. However, these
changes will both keep Traveller from feeling
―retro‖ and also allow GMs and players with expectations
of the future based upon their experiences
in the modern day to more comfortably enjoy
gaming in the Imperium.
We live in an era where augmented reality is
starting to become mainstream 1 , where electronics
can give people new senses 2 , or replace their existing
ones 3 , and where robots are beginning to perform
science on their own 4 , and robots have surpassed
human dexterity 5 . There seems to me to be
no excuse to not look to these technological wonders
and let them inform Traveller.
Changing Modern Tech Levels
When Traveller was written, humanity was a
TL 7 species; by the early 90s, we had achieved TL
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